


Hibernation

by mrstater



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Married Couple, Married Sex, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do (she) bears do in winter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hibernation

Jorah did not stir, but went on snoring into the pillows as Lynesse slipped out from beneath the furs and out of his bed.

 _Her_ bed.

Lord and Lady Mormont’s bed.

An oaken monstrosity that dominated the room he referred to as a _bedchamber_ though it was only slightly larger than the other rooms occupied by his kinswomen in the hall of pine logs, the posts crudely carved with bears and trees by some Bear Islander, long dead, who fancied himself an artisan. Lynesse felt rather than saw them now, running her hand along the frame to guide her through the pitch dark room, the fire having died in the night.

Thank the Seven she couldn’t see them. The first time she’d woken in her lord husband’s house in the dead of night, she’d screamed at the sight of a ravening bear’s ravening maw roaring silently at her from the foot of the bed; whenever Jorah loved her and her head fell back as she writhed beneath him she closed her eyes not in ecstasy—though there was of course that—but so she would not have to share that moment with the inquisitive faces of those bloody bears peering down at her.

 _We ought to have a new one made,_ she’d told him, several times, since he brought her to his home. _Something with a more feminine touch._

And by feminine, she thought, pulling a cloak draped over the end of the bed around her shivering shoulders, she did not mean by  Bear Island standards. She could envision it so clearly: her bed a matched set with the figure on the gate, cloaked in bear fur and suckling a babe at her breast and her hand wielding a battle axe. No _proper_ lady, that one.

Once she’d said as much to her husband, and his dark eyes had flickered away like a wounded creature’s.

 _Aye_ , he’d replied in that gruff way of his, _not a proper lady at all, compared with you._

But then he looked at her again, in the way that had prompted her to give him her favor at the tourney, to let him come into her bed, to consent to be his lady and wife.

_They say the love my great-great grandsire bore her was the stuff of songs. That he commissioned to Winterfell to have his lady’s likeness carved so that their descendants should not forget her face._

After that Lynesse uttered no word of complaint about the gate, however rudimentary she found it—mostly because her lips and tongue were too occupied with Jorah’s for further conversation. The bears on the bed, however, were a different matter. _Mightn’t we at least have a bed you and your father and your father’s father weren’t conceived on?_

Jorah conceded she had a point there, but so far nothing had changed in the _bedchamber._ Including, at present, the depth of her husband’s slumber. The room must be a close approximation of a hibernating bear’s den. Though Jorah might have declared her a she-bear after he’d draped her in the colors of House Mormont at their wedding, she couldn’t sleep the winter away, and neither should he.

The trailing hem of her mantel rasped over the rough-hewn planks and woven rush mats scattered about the floor—she’d put on _his_ cloak by mistake in the dark, instead of her own pretty velvet bedrobe—she shuffled blindly until she reached the room’s single window. She lifted the heavy wooden latch and pulled the wooden shutters apart, recoiling from the unexpected morning brightness.

No, not brightness… _whiteness_. As her eyes adjusted to the change from dark to light, she stepped closer to the window again, peering out over the ledge into the yard.

Which was a good deal closer to the second story window than it had been the night before when she’d stood wrapped in his arms and his cloak, watching the snow fall in the moonlight against the jagged outline of the pines.

"Jorah!" she cried.

In the bed, she saw the lump of his broad frame jerk beneath the furs; he grunted, but said nothing further.

"Jorah! You must wake up! There’s something terrible outside!"

He snapped upright, then, furs falling away from his hairy torso. Lynesse blinked, no longer from the light but with unbelief as she watched him reach for the sword belt which hung beside the bed on a peg, muttering something that sounded like _bloody krakens._

"Put that away, you lummox, it’s nothing like that," she said with a laugh which died as she turned to look once more out the window and saw what she’d never imagined.

She heard the sword slide back into its sheath, followed by another groan, this time from the bed as Jorah’s weight lifted from it, then the scuff of his bare feet on the floor as he padded to stand behind her. His arousal pressed against her buttocks through the cloak; how he could be in that state at all, naked in this cold, she didn’t know.

He bent to nuzzle at her neck. “What terrible thing did my lady wake me to see?”

"Why, the snow, of course!" Lynesse squirmed at the tickle of his beard and breath.

He raised his head, and her nose bumped his cheek as she turned hers to watch him peer out the window. For a long moment he stood there, silent, heavy brows knitting together. Then his dark eyes flicked down to meet hers.

"What about it?"

"Our _bedchamber_ isn’t normally on the ground floor of our hall! The snow is piled up higher than the front door! How will we get out?”

"Oh," came Jorah’s unsatisfactory reply, accompanied by one of his rare, low chuckles. Lynesse drew in a sharp breath of indignation at being laughed at, only to relax in the circle of his strong arms as it rumbled through her. "Well, can go out through the window, if needs must."

She gaped up at him. Was he in earnest? He must be; japing wasn’t exactly Jorah Mormont’s defining trait.

The snow glistened in the sunlight, and in the tears that suddenly pooled in her eyes. _What_ was this place her knight had brought her to, where windows became doors when lords’ halls were buried in snow? The weight of his cloak, his arms, seemed suddenly to crush her, squeezing the air from her burning lungs. She felt possessed of an urge to leap from that window and run down the hill and through the trees to the sea and board the first ship back to Oldtown, where she’d scarcely seen more snowfall than the occasional flurry.

"But _must_ we go out, my lady?” Jorah asked low, scooping her and his cloak up in his arms. “Remember, you’re a she-bear now, and they  hibernate the winter long.”

In spite of herself, Lynesse giggled as he deposited her on the bed…his bed, her bed, _their bed_ …the sound turning to a sigh as he kissed the length of her, the furs soft and warm beneath at her back, his chest much the same as her fingers stroked the coarse curling hair.

"And I always thought they just _slept_ ,” she said.

As her head fell back, the sunlight slanted on the upside-down faces if the bears with bared teeth. She closed her eyes and panted, “Jorah…the window. It might snow in.”

"Aye, it might," he growled.

Jorah didn’t leave the bed to draw the shutters, but pulled the heavy furs up over their heads, instead. enveloping them in warmth and darkness. Lynesse made no protest, for so long as the only pair of eyes she met belonged to _her_ bear, that was good enough for her. For now.

Later, she would ask him again about their bed. 


End file.
